Free The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge Page B

the beat of horses’ hooves.
    ‘It is Madame Rossi,’ informed Maria, when told of the women in the office, ‘and her niece from Casalecchio di Reno.’
    ‘Is it indeed?’ murmured Freda, and she fixed her eyes on the office window and waited for the visitors to depart.
    After a time a row of faces appeared at the glass and stared out at the factory floor, watching the workers at their labours.
     Deliberately Freda touched her lips with the tips of her fingers and blew Vittorio a kiss.
    ‘You are awful,’ complained Brenda. ‘Rossi must be wetting himself, with his wife watching everything.’
    ‘Rubbish,’ said Freda. ‘It should be obvious that Vittorio and I are close.’
    There was an air of festivity in the factory. The men drank copiously from the barrel of wine and fooled with the women. They
     had never known Freda so animated.
    At two o’clock, Salvatore, splendid in golfing shoes and a muffler of green silk, embraced Maria on her beer crate and received
     a blow on the cheek.
    ‘Aye, aye,’ she wailed, drumming her heels on the planking. ‘They are mad for the Outing.’
    She scrubbed at her face violently with her fist, to be rid of the moist imprint of his mouth. Salvatore, half-understanding
     her words, nodded eagerly at Freda and rolled his eyes with mock excitement.
    Freda waited in vain for Vittorio to come and speak to her. She clung to the belief that she must not let go of him, that
     he was destined to be her true love, that he knew it too, only he had not begun to accept it. And yet, remembering the way
     he had recoiled from her outside the office door, she could not help but wonder. Was it the same for him? She shivered with
     the cold and drooped at the bench. She was dreaming now, rather than thinking clearly. She wandered among the ginestra bushes
     and the olive trees, and the cool white rooms of the flat in Hampstead. She rose in a giant jet above the toy blocks of the
     airport buildings and began her long journey over land and sea. Now and then she was aware of the dismal factory, the hum
     of machinery in her ears, the tenderly smiling face of the Virgin Mary high on the green-painted wall. Had she been alone
     she would have swung her head and crooned her love aloud.
    Finally she was empty of images: no more pictures left in her head. There remained only an insatiable thirst for all the joy
     and glory of the good times to come, the life she was soon to know.

5
    Mercifully it was not raining. There was even a faint gleam of wintry sunlight. Brenda wore a black woollen dress, black stockings
     and green court shoes. Freda had hidden the tweed coat the night before; she insisted she borrow her purple cloak. Brenda
     didn’t want to wear the cloak, but neither did she wish to annoy Freda. Protesting that it was too long, she draped it about
     her shoul-ders and looked down at the green shoes and an inch of stocking. Freda, in a mauve trouser suit, a sheepskin coat
     gaily worked in blue thread down the front, and a lilac scarf casually knotted at the throat, wrapped two cooked chickens
     in silver foil and placed them in the basket. There was a tablecloth embroidered in one corner with pink petals, a lettuce
     in a polythene bag, some French bread and two pounds of apples. In a small jar, previously containing cocktail onions, she
     had poured a mixture of oil and lemon and crushed garlic.
    Having packed everything, she looked in her handbag and was dismayed to find she only had five cigar ettes. She asked Brenda
     to lend her some money.
    ‘I haven’t any,’ lied Brenda. ‘You made me pay for one chicken and I bought the shampoo.’
    It wasn’t that she was mean, but she wanted to be prepared for disaster – the 40p in her purse was to get home if she was
     left stranded at the Stately Home.
    Freda was livid. She kicked the basket roughly with her foot and threw herself on to the bed.
    ‘How can I get through a bloody day like this on five ciggies?’ she shouted.
    ‘But